Are Near Death Experiences Evidence for Christianity

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What are “near death” experiences and what do they tell us about the nature of reality and the world in which we live? Are they actually evidence of theism or Christianity? J. Warner and Jimmy Wallace discuss recent news articles in this episode of the NRBtv Cold-Case Christianity Broadcast.

[@inukithesavage828]

While I really like NDEs and the studies that show them to be real, I really appreciate J Warner's skeptical approach here because it very much gives me confidence that he doesn't just believe things because he wants to.

[@auntsally1130]

I had a NDE more than 22 years ago when I was hit by a car and came head down on the bonnet and took the number plate off with my face. I wasn't a Believer in Jesus at the time, probably more leaning toward the new age then. I couldn't make sense of my experience and I never talked about it until recently when another online Pastor directed me to where it was in the Scripture = Rev. 6.9. I did not see Jesus nor angelic beings, but I know that is where I was and it was a positive experience. What I will say is that Judgement is real. I walked out of hospital 3 days later with no pain, just severe concussion plus a few cuts and bruises and a 2 inch jagged scar on my forehead which is barely visible now. Praise the Lord for his mercy on me. It wasn't my time. 🙏✝

[@DavidVonR]

I worked with a guy that had a heart condition where his heart would randomly stop. Eventually, he had to get a pacemaker installed. On on occasion, his heart stopped and he said that the next thing he knew, he was standing in front of an angel. He started crying as he described the angel. When your heart stops, your brain stops working in about 10-15 seconds. The EEG goes flat very quickly with no cardiac activity. You shouldn't have any experience of anything, yet many people report an ultra-real or life-changing experience during cardiac arrest.

[@Godsbelovedkid]

Wow!!

[@julieamos86]

I am a Christian, but I remain highly sceptical of these things. Even with the out of body experiences in which people claim to know or have seen things we may think they would not know otherwise. I would take the example you gave where the patient seemed to have knowledge of another patient's condition in another part of the hospital. Nurses, visitors or doctors could have easily been speaking about this person within earshot of our subject. As you say someone with no life signs is not necessarily completely dead otherwise they would not be able to be resuscitated. We cannot say what snippets of information could get into the person's brain in this state, which they later believe they have seen or know because of an obe. Grace and peace.

[@marioandultrachap]

I did hear a case where the woman saw something in the other room that was happening while dead that again there's no way she could of known about it even in earshot.

[@rebelliocross519]

What i most of the time, when i read NDE stories, miss is that most of the people who have a NDE die... they ask: Why not so many people have a bad NDE? My response would be: because they might went to Hell and did not get a chance to change their destiny....

[@PJErvin]

I read an observation that an overwhelming majority of (if not nearly all) near death experiences align with what the individual already believes and what elements of death are present in that individual’s culture. If the scripture is sufficient for all life, Godliness and truth, it is anti-God to use these anecdotes as any sort of evidence.

[@marioandultrachap]

Yeah that's why I'm skeptical but it could be that God may hide Himself from non believers too. We do know during resurrection the only people who saw Jesus post resurrection we're his believers

[@davidmiller9363]

God is God. sometimes we sell that truth short. He can do what He wants when He wants. That being said, do we know anything about these people later on life? It comes across as tabloid material if all we have is just the immediate report. Did that moment have an impact with their future?

[@rigavitch]

There are NDE in The Bible!!!!!!!!! Currently reading The Orthodox Church experiences of NDE and The afterlife. would love an update including this information. 🙏🏼

[@Mikha335]

An NDE might just be a “spiritual experience” like visions or dreams. They have a sense of reality to them too. They too can’t be explained by “science”, and we know from scripture that they could either be deceptive or truthful. They can also be miraculous in that they change a person’s life, or enable them to see real things outside a person’s sensory perception. When seen in this light, the Bible remains the supreme revelation and NDEs are put in there proper place: Near Death spiritual Experiences that can be evaluated based on their consistency with scripture. Coming from Mormonism I used to believe in dualism, the immortality and preexistence of souls, and NDEs. I clung to these ideas with a religious fervor for 40 years. But about 3 years ago God opened my mind to see that all these things contradict and undermine God as creator, and the authority of the Bible, His primal revelation to mankind. And I further realize that these doctrines can and do promote necromancy and idolatry. The scriptures explicitly teach that corruptible man is made of dust, and that the only hope of immortality is in the bodily resurrection from the dead here on earth. And this, (not going to heaven when we die), is the hope of the righteous. Only one man ascended into heaven when he died - the resurrected Lord Yeshua the Messiah.

[@marioandultrachap]

So what happens after we die? Do we go to sleep and wake up to the resurrection?

[@stevendehaan6637]

Would be curious to see if anyone has ever surveyed nde survivors and seen how many became Jesus followers?

[@allysondoerfler2435]

You see Jesus IF you are a Christ-follower. There have been people resuscitated to visited Hell - then they accepted Jesus as Lord.

[@brebeaa]

As I understand, NDErs tend to become more spiritual and less Religious after their experience. Some Christians do become more committed to their faith after an NDE, and even some non-religious or atheist folks become Christian (e.g. Howard Storm), but in general, there’s an overall movement towards a more general spiritual outlook after an NDE.

[@inukithesavage828]

I don't know, but I know there are a couple showing that NDE patients are way better than non NDE patients at describing their own resuscitation.

[@m.valdivia8048]

Jesus Himself denies NDE Experiences. There is an after life but He said that no one dies, goes to the afterlife and comes back. It is appointed to man to die once and then the judgment. In addition Out of body experiences are based in occult.

[@RUT812]

Amen

[@brebeaa]

May I offer an alternative Christian perspective? NDEs actually fit nicely within Christian belief. They support the Christian idea that we exist as both body and spirit, and that separate from the body the spirit can experience the material world from a unique perspective. It’s even possible that Stephen and Paul had NDEs recorded in scripture. A good resource on the subject is Christian professor and scholar Dr. Gary Habermas. Regarding Hebrews 9, since near death experiencers do not permanently die, they may not be subject to the judgement mentioned in that text. I think NDE’s can bolster a Christian’s faith, rather than undermine it. Food for thought!

[@vassilisangelides4085]

Then what about Lazarus?

[@debrahurst4130]

I've read and heard a lot of NDE stories and have always taken an interest in them. This is what I think and its just an insight I get sometimes. Just because the physical body seems dead doesn't mean the spiritual body is dead and I personally think we have a spiritual body and its not the soul. The spiritual body dies when the silver cord is broken. Theres a verse in Ecclesiastes about it. Ecclesiastes 12:6 Remember him-before the silver cord is severed, and the golden bowl is broken; before the pitcher is shattered at the spring, and the wheel broken at the well, I think this is why people have these experiences with some being deception from Satan because its in the spirit world. Everything said has to be tested by the bible. It is also why the people are almost always told, its not your time and you have to go back. I think the time of death is different there. Honestly put, your not dead if you came back. It's not a resurrection.

[@marioandultrachap]

Was thinking that too. I remember in the bible God sent them a STRONG delusion so they may NEVER know the truth. There's some people out there that may have a NDE that has rejected the gospel so much that God just allows them to live in their delusion so there's that too

[@rebelliocross519]

if these Christian NDEs are true, and they could well be, why do we never hear from people of other cultures and religions in Saudi Arabia, for example, that he or she has come to faith as a result? I follow NDE stories fairly intensively, but I've never heard or seen anything like that. In that regard, it may well be an adjustment from that other dimension to our own experience. To make the transition smoother or something...

[@asgaiyawaya3973]

I actually traveled the world for 6 years, mainly SE Asia, and I think we have. We just never recognized it because we failed to realize these are Egyptians, Buddhists, pick your pagan, trying to understand what they saw from their own perspective. When I was Thailand i visited a number of temples and noticed that there was a hell in their mythology. Even at a temple near Surin there are different depictions of hellish depictions of how people suffer in hell, this is called Wat Sa Khampaeng Yai, very similar to what Christians have said about hell over the years. In fact when you look up every mythical depiction of heaven and hell they are from different religions but they have striking similarities as if they are talking about the same place. Even when you look up Chinese Taoist depictions you see striking similarities. You know if it helps try to do a mental experiment where you try to imagine 100 or so people who have never even heard of places like the Grand Canyon or New York, you know pick your incredible US landmark and imagine these people who have never even heard of these places visiting these places and then returning to where they came and try to imagine how they would write or talk about what they saw and notice how similar many of these viewpoints probably would be. Now take that same idea and apply it here and you can see what I am talking about.

[@rigavitch]

There are plenty on KZbin of Muslims seeing Jesus...

[@kimkaragiannis848]

​@rigavitch Yes, and it is so beautiful!! Jesus is saving them and getting them out of their false religion. ❤

[@tamaragrooms9369]

A very wise former pastor had no confidence in nde’s at all. He believed they were either bogus or the result of residual brain activity. In his opinion, too many of them are unscriptural.

[@RUT812]

I agree! See my comment.

[@savedbygrace463]

I totally agree.

[@walterdebnam8021]

Oh Yes, you did I knew it 👍☝️

[@allysondoerfler2435]

"Then Abraham said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not be persuaded even if someone rises from the dead.’ ” Luke 16:31 NDE probably won't convince a non-believer - I don't believe they are meant to. They are to minister to believers! To comfort those who have had a loved one die. If you think a NDE is hard to believe what are you going to believe about God resurrecting YOUR body at the last trumpet?

[@richardjstuart3978]

The Bible says even if I sent someone back from the dead they wouldnt believe. The older I get the more I realize that's true.

[@marioandultrachap]

Where?

[@Cross-Defender]

@@marioandultrachapLuke 16:31

[@scottlyman3191]

You need to watch Ebon Alexander account

[@justincameron9661]

I have always wondered what the evolutionary advantage to near death experience if no after life

[@mbgrafix]

Anecdotal evidence (such as NDE) is not true evidence as it is purely subjective and cannot be subjectively measured in any meaningful way. That's not to say that NDEs are not fascinating...it's just that it is a road with a dead end (no pun intended), and I believe that more objective evidence is a better method for apologetics.

[@DavidVonR]

Not quite. Some NDEs can be tested in the sense that if they report witnessing events that they could only have seen if they left their bodies, then these reports can be checked for accuracy. Many people who have NDEs accurately report events that they couldn't have known about unless they left their bodies. Also: people often have NDEs while having no cardiac or brain activity as measured by EKGs and EEGs, when such experiences should be impossible according to a materialist understanding of consciousness. Both of these observations provide strong evidence against the materialist notion that the brain creates consciousness.

[@flippinflabbyflatties]

Have you studied veridical NDEs? These are the cases in which people aquire information about the environment that could not have been acquired by the physical senses. Check out the book The Self Does Not Die: Verified Paranormal Phenomena from Near-Death Experiences. NDEs make a compellingly argument for the existence of immaterial conciousness.

[@wiwaxiasilver827]

The problem is, there’s no control groups being tested against the NDE cases (it’s hard to set a proper one in the first place), there’s an inevitable lack of standardized settings, and I wonder if interviewer bias was properly accounted for, possibly using a double blind study.

[@brebeaa]

@@wiwaxiasilver827 There have been double blind studies on NDEs, but data has proven extremely difficult to capture in a testing environment. There is a book called “The Self does not Die” where third parties investigate veridical perception reports after the fact with doctors and other witnesses that do confirm NDE details.

[@walterdebnam8021]

Gary Habermath has corroborated hundreds if not thousands of NDE'S around the world that are quite astounding. I thought you read his book Jim!?

[@garrywhite3461]

There are so many well documented and confirmed NDE situations that are much more convincing then the one case they reference in this video. I am frankly a bit disappointed that Cold Case Christianity has not done at least a little research into these cases before making a video to opine on their validity.

[@TheProdigalMeowMeowMeowReturns]

No.

[@whousa642]

No

[@BiblePsychology68]

Evidence of God not christianity.

[@thomassmith6344]

Hello Michelle

[@inukithesavage828]

While I really like NDEs and the studies that show them to be real, I really appreciate J Warner's skeptical approach here because it very much gives me confidence that he doesn't just believe things because he wants to.